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Welcome back to the First Thoughts series, everyone! This time, we’re taking a look at a curious little indie film from 2008 called Sita Sings the Blues, which was written, directed, produced and animated by Nina Paley. My knowledge of Hinduism being almost non-existent, I really didn’t know what to expect going into this one, but it turned out to be quite a charming experience, even if it didn’t have as much of an impact on me as some of the earlier works I’ve looked at.
I feel it’s important to note up front that this is a somewhat controversial film, as fiction based around religious material inevitably is. Production on Sita began around 2003, after an inciting incident in the director’s life – the collapse of her marriage – inspired her to make it. Before I began researching the piece, I assumed that the director would be an Indian woman, so I was surprised to find that she’s actually a white, midwestern American with a Jewish background. It’s probably no surprise to hear that this has upset some viewers who felt that such sacred material should have been handled by someone with an actual cultural connection to it, but that’s an argument I’m in no position to partake in. Regardless of your opinion of the director, there’s no denying how much work she put into this largely self-made film – while she did have some support from Jake Friedman for the “Battle of Lanka” scene, Paley completed the bulk of the work herself, using mostly 2D computer graphics and Flash animation (RIP Flash). Traditional techniques like rotoscoping were also employed to capture the choreography in the dance sections, most notably in the eclectic scene midway through after Nina’s husband breaks up with her. Altogether, Paley estimated her total hours of work on the film to be well over nine thousand – more than one full calendar year!
So, what is Sita about? It is essentially a “SparkNotes version” of the Ramayana, which is one of Hinduism’s most important texts along with the Mahabharata, another ancient Sanskrit epic. Many of the most important events in Hindu history (Itihasa) are contained within it, with the story following the life of Rama, a young prince who is the seventh avatar of the god Vishnu. In the film, the basic events covered in the Ramayana are dissected in a light-hearted manner by a trio of Indian shadow puppet narrators, interspersed with animated segments of key scenes in various styles. The story is also contrasted with a series of interludes detailing the breakdown of the director’s marriage, paralleling her relationship troubles with those of Sita, Rama’s wife, whose perspective is made central to this retelling. In Paley’s words, the film is “a tale of truth, justice and a woman’s cry for equal treatment”.
The narration was created from a simple recording of a two-hour discussion between actors Aseem Chhabra, Bhavana Nagulapally and Manish Acharya, while the central character of Rama was voiced by Debargo Sanyal. For the titular Sita, Paley hired Reena Shah to be her speaking voice, but she also chose to add a new dimension to Sita’s story by using the late jazz star Annette Hanshaw (1901-1985) as her singing voice. The rest of the cast included Deepti Gupa, Pooja Kumar, Nitya Vidyasagar and Aladdin Ullah (cool name), with the talented Sanjiv Jhaveri voicing a multitude of parts such as Dave, Dasharatha, Dhobi, Ravana and Valmiki, and the director herself voicing her counterpart, Nina, in the flashback scenes. In addition to Hanshaw’s tunes, further music was also provided by an assortment of other artists, including members of Masaladosa and My Pet Dragon.
Actually, the use of the 1920s Hanshaw recordings proved to be quite a sticking point in the production. Paley believed they lay outside of US copyright law during her preparations, but later found that this was untrue because of differences in the law when they were made; synchronising Hanshaw’s voice to the animated Sita would be a notable copyright issue. The songs turned out to have never truly been in the public domain, so initially, Paley was faced with having to stump up a whopping $220,000 (without a distributor) to appease the copyright holders. Luckily, she eventually managed to negotiate the fee down to $50,000, but she still had to take out a loan to license the music in early 2009, after the film had been completed.
According to IMDb, Chris Robertson was responsible for the music clearance. We all owe him quite the debt of gratitude, as the bluesy musical numbers Sita performs are easily some of the film’s best sequences, at least in my opinion (not that that is unusual in animated musicals). The unexpected juxtaposition of old American jazz with the ancient Indian tale works surprisingly well, and Hanshaw’s sweet, girlish voice drums up tremendous sympathy for Sita right from the start. I must admit that I found it tough to reconcile the many different “versions” of Sita with one another,due to the shifting art style, but the Hanshaw one was my favourite. The film makes use of eleven of her songs – The Song Is Ended (1927), Who’s That Knockin’ at My Door? (1927), If You Want the Rainbow, You Must Have the Rain (1928), Am I Blue? (1929), Daddy Won’t You Please Come Home? (1929), Here We Are (1929), I’ve Got a Feeling I’m Falling (1929), Lover Come Back to Me (1929), Mean to Me (1929), Moanin’ Low (1929) and What Wouldn’t I Do for That Man (1929) – which might feel a tad excessive, but then, it is quite impressive how Paley was able to fit so many into the context of the story. The handful of other songs were also enjoyable, particularly the rather tongue-in-cheek one in which Rama’s two songs blithely sing his praises while ignoring how rotten he’s been to Sita.
Outside of the music, I also had a blast with the narrators’ segments, which are done in an irreverent and unscripted way reminiscent of a podcast, full of regional context and personal impressions. I know this rubbed some people up the wrong way, but personally, I got a kick out of seeing this complicated story presented in simpler terms – there are so many wives and children and avatars that even the narrators start getting them muddled, which just goes to show how many variations there have been on this tale over the ages. I wouldn’t necessarily claim to understand the Ramayana after only having experienced it through this (highly simplified) film, but I know more about it than when I went in, anyway.
Without knowing the context of the film’s production, I suspected the American couple’s plight was intended to be a parallel of Sita’s situation, but I didn’t realise the events were drawn from Paley’s own life. I can see why some viewers were offended by making the scumbag Dave a modern proxy for the divine Rama, but the comparison highlights just how little has changed in gender relations over the course of history. I suppose the intent was to try to humanise the Ramayana and better contextualise it within the modern world; perhaps the execution wasn’t to everyone’s taste, but the idea of making the text more accessible is understandable. For me, the problem was that Nina’s story did not end up being linked very well with Sita’s – the last scene shows us that Nina has found solace in her personal relation to the events of the Ramayana, but we’re not told anything about how she ended up reading it in the first place (remember, she’s not a Hindu).
Still, even if the narrative feels a bit tenuous at times, the artwork of the film is enough to make up for it. It’s not always consistent, but at its best, it’s bright, colourful and distinctive, with the characters shifting into different styles depending on whose perspective the scene is focusing on.
For the storybook dialogue scenes between musical numbers, the characters are painted in profile on top of static backgrounds, with the design echoing the 18th-century Indian tradition of Rajput painting in some of the film’s most beautiful segments. The animation of these scenes is minimalistic; the characters simply move across the screen in fixed positions, rather like cutouts (these moments reminded me a little of Lotte Reiniger). Continuing that thought, the narrators are animated as traditional shadow puppets with relaxed, contemporary voices that hilariously contrast with their ornate, decorative designs – these are the funniest segments. There is even a touch of postmodernism in the photographic compositions that are sometimes superimposed over the more traditional artwork, which hurry to keep up with the narrators’ musings and contradictions (I especially enjoyed the “graffiti” being scrawled all over Ravana as the group discuss how his perception has been demonised).
Then you have the musical numbers, among the film’s most recognisable scenes, where a voluptuous, doe-eyed incarnation of Sita croons Hanshaw’s tunes to the audience while lamenting her romantic woes with Rama. These segments are some of the film’s most cutting-edge, using the modern technique of vector graphic animation (driven by digital animation software) to create an interesting contrast between the sleek visuals and the old-timey quality of the music, but the imagery can get borderline disturbing at times. For instance, there’s one moment where a pregnant Sita imagines herself turning to bones and collapsing in despair, along with the tiny skeletons of her unborn children! Overall, though, this is probably my favourite of the many visual styles on offer, mostly because it allows the characters a greater range of expression and thus makes them easier to relate to.
For the modern-set scenes involving Nina and Dave, the animation switches to a rougher “Squigglevision” technique which, according to Wikipedia, “conveys the kind of restlessness inherent in the story and achieves a more light-hearted, universal tone with its simple, highly stylised renderings of character and environments”. I get the idea behind it, but while this style works nicely on TV shows like Ed, Edd n Eddy, it does feel a bit out of step with the higher-quality animation elsewhere in the film. The experimental style reminds me of the old Flash animations popular in the 2000s on sites like Newgrounds and Albino Blacksheep, but it’s odd to see it in a feature film. Still, maybe that’s just me; we have a whole film comprised of stick figures coming up soon, so I’d better get that pole outta my keister.
Even after the film was completed, Paley continued to have issues with copyright, so in 2013 she changed her ownership rights to the film to try and make it more readily accessible to potential audiences. She adopted what’s known as a “copyleft” policy, so the film can now be watched online for free in a variety of places (I’ve linked to the Wikipedia page, which includes a full copy), although being a die-hard hoarder myself, I bought the DVD. It sounds as though Paley had to jump through a lot of hoops to turn a profit from the film, but now, more than a decade on, it seems to have won an audience at last and is regarded by many in the animation community as a hidden gem. Roger Ebert, The New York Times and The Hollywood Reporter were among the major reviewers who praised Paley’s work and it can now be found on many lists of best animated films, having won numerous festival awards during its original run.
Still, we can’t ignore the film’s detractors, many of whom make good points about the inauthenticity of having a white woman direct a film which will be, for many, their only experience of this sacred Hindu text (that includes me). Some members of the Hindu community felt that the depiction of the Ramayana’s events was insulting (presumably because it bashes Rama’s treatment of Sita) and would provoke religious intolerance among its viewers. In 2009, right-wing organisation Hindu Janajagruti Samiti even tried to ban the film outright by starting a petition against it, going so far as to initiate legal action against everybody involved in its production and marketing and calling it “a derogatory act against the entire Hindu community”. Aside from the issues of irreverence, a more recent problem is that the director has apparently marked herself as a TERF; I try to keep artists’ personal views separate when considering their works, but goodness knows it isn’t easy. Trans rights are human rights, Nina! Paley has since gone on to create another film called Seder-Masochism, released ten years after Sita and now also available to watch for free online – it’s an Exodus adaptation, so given my fondness for Prince of Egypt, I must admit I’m keen to check it out.
To wrap this up, all I can say is that as someone with little background knowledge in Hinduism, Sita was for me a fun but ultimately rather disjointed and confusing experience – introducing me to the lovely Annette Hanshaw is the most notable effect it had on me. It does have some beautiful sequences, but I’m not sure how relevant the forays into the director’s personal life really were, especially given her lack of connection to the culture the story comes from. I would definitely be interested in seeing another, more comprehensive exploration of the Ramayana (and indeed there are plenty, including at least two other animated versions), but I don’t think I’ll be revisiting Sita too often in the years ahead. It did beat Fantastic Planet and was on about the same level as The King and the Mockingbird, but it certainly doesn’t compare to Paprika, Allegro non troppo, Animal Farm or Achmed. If you like it, of course, that’s great – my apologies if I’ve been a bit harsh with it.
Thank you so much for reading, and I hope you’ll join me again soon to continue the series. I’m planning to try and squeeze in The Secret of Kells before we get on to Roger Rabbit, but we shall see – I do have an anniversary to prepare for later this week, after all. Until next time, take care and staaay animated!
References
By Nina Paley, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=74983072 – credit for poster
By Uncredited – https://archive.org/stream/radiodigest2627unse#page/n41/mode/2up, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46230775 – credit for Annette Hanshaw image
By Nina Paley – http://www.sitasingstheblues.com/press.html, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7019768 – credit for Ravana approaching Sita
By Nina Paley – http://www.sitasingstheblues.com/press.html, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7019784 – credit for narrator discussing Rama’s attitude towards Sita
By Nina Paley – http://www.sitasingstheblues.com/press.html, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7019787 – credit for Sita singing about Rama
By Nina Paley – http://www.sitasingstheblues.com/press.html, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7019789 – credit for Nina posing for Dave
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sita_Sings_the_Blues – Wiki page (You can also watch the film here)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1172203/ – IMDB profile
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